Diablo Hellfire Barbarian Series Has Sadly

After Diablos sequel, the creatively named Diablo II, arrived a few years later in 2000, it too wound up being a smashing success, holding a consistent place as one of the best-selling games in the United States all the way into 2006.

Diablo: Hellfire was an expansion pack for the original Diablo that wasnt actually developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

Instead, Blizzard outsourced the development of Hellfire to a third-party studio called Synergistic Software, itself a part of the now defunct PC gaming publisher Sierra Entertainment.

These days, there are many among the Blizzard old guard who would rather pretend that Diablo: Hellfire never existed, which is a shame since, when it launched in 1997, it only helped in making an already great game even better.

However, at the time, both Blizzard and Sierra were owned by a larger conglomerate called Comp-U-Card International (known more colloquially as CUC), and the executives who ran CUCs board felt that there was still money to be made from a property that was as hot as the original Diablo.

Blizzard wanted to focus solely on Diablo II, so CUC decided to outsource the production of a Diablo expansion pack to Sierra, and Sierra tapped Synergistic Software to handle development.

CUC was intent on moving forward with or without Blizzards blessing though, so Blizzard finally acquiesced under the condition that it would get final approval on whatever new features Synergistic added in, and that, naturally, none of the expansions content would overlap with what Blizzard had planned for Diablo II.

With those conditions set in place, development on Hellfire began in earnest.

Synergistic was only allowed to add in one new playable character class, despite having several potential class ideas, eight new dungeon levels (restricted to a total of two new dungeon themes), and only a small handful of new music tracks, quests, and items.

This restriction meant that those who wanted to utilize Battle.net were forced to choose between playing just the base Diablo experience or playing the Hellfire -enhanced version, since any progress made online couldnt be transferred to the Hellfire, and vice-versa.

The expansions optional story campaign and quests meshed well with the rest of the games gothic veneer, and players appreciated having a new character class to try out (the staff-wielding monk), new items to find, and new dungeons to explore.

The expansion even added in helpful quality-of-life features such as a Warp spell that would quickly transport a player to a dungeons entrance, and a special persistent room called the Cornerstone of the World that allowed players to transfer items between their offline characters.

The Bard was a version of Diablos default Rogue class who could dual-wield weapons, introducing the mechanic ahead of its appearance in Diablo II, while the Barbarian was a version of Diablos Fighter class that used two-handed axes, again beating Diablo IIs Barbarian class to the punch.

Synergistic even went ahead and hid an entire online multiplayer component in Hellfires code, a component that could also be enabled with a cheat input and functioned separately from the Battle.net service.

Blizzard was understandably upset, but in Synergistics eyes the folks at Blizzard had also tried too hard to micromanage a project that wasnt technically theirs.

The warm reception Hellfire received from critics helped in quelling Blizzards wrath, and in a way Blizzard actually wound up shooting itself in the foot since the one major criticism aimed at Hellfire was its lack of Battle.net integration.

Diablo Hellfire Barbarian Series Has Sadly

As of late, the Diablo series has sadly taken a back seat to more popular Blizzard properties (though Diablo III is still humming along despite being over six years old at this point), but much like its titular Lord of Terror, the series dormancy hardly means its gone for good.

Developer Crystal Dynamics is hoping the planned DLC for the game in.